Starbound
by WordDevourer
Summary: 12 trolls find themselves in a spaceship. They aren't really sure how they got there. Still, there is a teleporter and a world below. (Contains some elements of the game 'Starbound', but probably not enough to warrant calling it a crossover.) As to content, if you read Homestuck, this shouldn't bother you at all.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: Who is this young… What even is he?

You are now part of a milling crowd of some kind of beings. You don't really know who you are, just that you are arguing. "I told you this was a stupid idea! I mean seriously, why would you just do something like…? uh, who are you?"

"I don't know Karkat, it's all a bit… Huh… Wait, what?"

"Who is Karkat? Is that me?" You say, trying the name on, and finding that it fits. Apparently your name is Karkat.

Your name is Karkat, and you have no idea who or where you are. You look at the milling crowd of horned beings and somehow feel something like a feeling of community, which is stupid, and the thought occurs that you must be a horrible person if these are who you consider friends, which is less stupid. You also get the feeling that the confusion is somehow your fault, which of course makes perfect sense, and the idea elicits a surprising amount of guilt. Perhaps you should try to fix this somehow.

"Everybody shut up!" you scream. They quiet down. That'll have to do. "Does anyone know who anyone else is!?" Silence, from all sides. "No? Alright then; you," you say pointing at the one you were just talking to, "you knew my name. So who are they?

"We-ell," he says, the word drawn out like he's trying to remember. "If y'all've really forgotten, I guess I should say… I'm Gamzee" he begins, pointing at himself, then continues, "You're Karkat," you knew that already.

He points at one of the nearest people, "That's Kanaya," he points to who's wearing probably the most colorful clothes of anyone here, (Wearing a bright red skirt while everyone else is wearing black and grey) it kind of drowns out any other features. She's standing nervously by one of the others, who Gamzee points to next. "That's Vriska," She has one robotic eye and she looks like she knows what's going on, which annoys you. "That's Tavros," he says, pointing at someone stocky, and strong looking, albeit kind of uneasy, and his legs are odd, maybe robotic, you really noticed his legs mostly because they were edging him away from Vriska.

"That's Eridan," Gamzee continues, moving on to another group. Fins, you notice, and a purple streak in his hair. Otherwise, you aren't sure what to think about him (Yes you do. You just know that this guy is a trigger-happy maniac with no respect). "Feferi," another with fins, and strangely huge hair, which, once it gets away from her head, seems to come out of nowhere, taking up most of the space near her. "Sollux," double horns, and his eyes, behind his red and blue glasses, are brighter than they should be, maybe glowing? "Aradia," smiling slightly despite the circumstances, and in a way that suggests that it's not insanity, but excitement, not like Gamzee, who is mostly smiling in an oblivious way (This is at odds with your instincts, as they are, you recall her being, what, gloomier?).

"Equius," probably the heaviest built person here and angry, and almost disturbed, he's wearing cracked glasses that have one lens missing (And what's with those blue blotches under his eyes?). "Nepeta," looks kind of the opposite of Equius, but you get the feeling that she could probably kill you, if she wanted to. A few the stains on her jacket look suspiciously like dried blood, for one thing.

"That's Terezi," Gamzee finishes. She's wearing red glasses, and is actually facing almost a bit away to the left of you, at a wall. Her hand is held slightly out in front of her, as if she's usually holding something, maybe a cane? (Yes, definitely a cane, you are absolutely certain of that)

These names fit in your mind, and fit with the faces. You won't forget them, or not again, anyway, because you know exactly who they are, and you aren't the guy who forgot them anyway, that was your past self.

You turn to Gamzee, ready to ask him what else he knows, just in time to see him walking away. As he goes, he stumbles, and catches himself on a wall. Well, on something in the wall. Probably a safe, you bet. Whatever it is, it slides open. As if purely coincidentally, his hand slips into the hole, bringing out two sticklike things. He keeps moving, shaking his head, as if trying to shake off a thought, and then vanishes in a blur of light. Nobody notices that either, or if they do, they just start arguing about it. It's like something blunted their ability to think straight. (A bit of you suggests that it didn't work on you because you didn't think straight anyway, you yell at it until it shuts up.)

In your mind, though, the room goes quiet, as you look at the place where Gamzee got those things he has. You walk over to the thing, and reach inside.

Inside, you find a few seeds, which present themselves to you as 'grubseeds,' (an image of scaly, round fruits appears in your mind, which is strange, because you're pretty sure they don't exist.) some torches, some wood, a strange U-shaped device, which you just know is called a matter manipulator, and a whole mess of pure white weapons. You stow it all in your inventory… Wait, what?

You examine your inventory. There really isn't that much to say. All you have is what you just picked up. On a more interesting note, you find something like a logbook in a similar manner. All it really tells you is that you are trolls, can't remember anything, and that your ship is crippled. Wait, you're on a ship? What kind?

Instead of further examining your inventory, you look around. You are in a strange room. The walls are made of a sleek material, which is both shinyand bare, the floor is much the same. Only a few small things stop the sleekness from perfection. On the wall is the thing you filled your inventory with, probably the ship's locker. On the floor is a stone-like disc, (welded to the floor, and patterned with strange triangular shapes) which you notice is right where Gamzee vanished. You'll have to remember that. There is also a door, which you go through.

Through the door, you find yourself in a small room, which has a single chair, a bunch of instruments that you don't recognize, and a massive window. You look through the window, which at first glance seems to be a computer screen, until you realize that what you are seeing is real.

You look through the window, and see space.

The skies are filled. Light flows through the void, as if playing a cosmic instrument, or, say, a visual symphony. A familiar note is produced; it's the one the gods play when they wish to inspire awe.

You can't remember anything really, so something is obviously missing. The memories currently eluding you are likely only the latest in a thousand plots against you by something that you don't have a name for, because you can't remember it. Actually, who cares, thinking about this is useless, both to you, and the others waiting outside. Well, outside is relative right now.

You go back to where you started from, where the others still are. Why are they all arguing again, you wonder? Surely they aren't all such idiots that they can't think enough to look around. Well, you can test that theory easily enough.

You walk back through the crowd, still silent. They barely notice, you, until you walk over to the place where Gamzee vanished. You step onto the thing, and vanish.

You don't feel the movement. Perhaps you just can't remember it. One way or another, you are standing on solid ground, which is good, even if that ground is a dirty yellow. Also good is the fact that you can breathe. You didn't think to try and find out beforehand. Of course, the air smells metallic, and you can smell some kind of rotting, but that's beside the point. What is the point is that you're alive, and Gamzee probably is too.

After these few seconds, you open your inventory, to… What, exactly? What can you really do? Well, you're here, anyway, standing in the light of the moons… You blink, and look up. There are no moons, just a single sun. Something in you screams to get inside, even though there is no inside to get to. Still, nothing's happened yet, and you don't really know how to get back up to the ship.

When you opened up your inventory, you noticed something. Checking again, you see a notice, telling you to make something. Following its instructions, you somehow turn some wood into a table, without tools, in a matter of minutes. Well, you won't complain if things are ridiculously easy to make. As you put the table on the ground, you simultaneously notice that you just used the matter manipulator, without thinking about it, and that you feel something behind you. They must have followed you. Good, you asked them to. You turn around.

Well, it's not all of them. It's just Terezi. Now that you have time, you take a closer look at her. Her glasses are cracked, you now notice, and you can see her eyes behind them. They are bright red, which even without your memories, you know is weird, generally speaking.

"Hello," you say.

"Hello," she responds, in a voice that makes you both sad, and… You cut that thought off. You didn't know where it was going, and don't really want to know. Besides, whatever you were going to think, you are pretty sure it wouldn't be objective and leaderly (the idea that you might not be in charge doesn't occur to you). You are trapped on an alien planet. Unless it's yours, in the future or something, (which also doesn't occur to you).

"Are the others coming, Terezi?" You say.

"Not yet. That's not why I'm here."

"Well, why are you here?" you ask.

"I have two reasons," she says, "I saw you take those weapons. I want the cane."

"And?" you say, when she doesn't continue her thought.

"_And_, there's trouble up there," she continues, "and something tells me that they're going to need somebody a bit shoutier than me to make them listen."

You just sort of stand there for a second or two, not sure what to say. "Fine," you say finally, both angry that you were just dragooned into being leader, and satisfied because you were just wanting to be in charge. You guess you can live with it.

"How am I supposed to get up there, though?" you ask.

She holds up a hand, and points slightly below a metal band on her wrist. "With these, I assume," she says, "I don't recognize them, which makes me think they're part of the ship". (Oh great, you were only the first one to leave because you didn't think.)

You check your own wrist, and sure enough, you find one. Well, fair enough.

You toss the cane and the U-shaped thing to Terezi because you just have a feeling and then use the thing on your wrist. You vanish just before you would have seen Terezi grin.

You appear on the ship just in time to see Tavros fly at the teleporter, and jump back just in time for him to land almost at your feet, and vanish in a flash. You look around. There is nobody where he apparently came from, but you think you know what happened. Looking around shows you that there really is a division up here. Eridan is off on one side, looking at where you just came from. Vriska is on the other side, smirking, further cementing your guess that she made Tavros do that, although, in retrospect, you have no idea what made you think that. A few other people are near them, maybe on their side, maybe trying to calm them down. You don't pay attention to who.

As you notice all of this, they have gone back to arguing. You sigh, and scream, "SHUT UP!"

Like before, they slowly quiet down. You can't see yourself, but you just know you look. "What's going on in here?!" you shout.

"I don't see that it's any a' your concern what we highbloods do." Eridan says. Now, you are well and truly angry, because this is your concern; nothing is not your concern on this ship. 

Your voice changes, not filled with mere anger, but with fury. "NOT MY CONCERN!? HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOURSELF BELIEVE THAT THIS IS NOT MY CONCERN!? FOR ONE THING, WE'RE ALL STUCK HERE TOGETHER, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE." Your voice quiets, but just a bit, "and you were talking about who would take over, right? Don't deny it, there's no way it could be anything else. You apparently cannot see the obvious fact that literally the _only_ person in this ship at all fit to be a leader is _**ME**__**!**_"

As you finish, you feel something kind of like a velvet cloth descend over your mind. You are suddenly utterly calm except for a little core of you which is almost exclusively angry.

After a few seconds, you realize you're handing control over to Vriska. This will not stand because A. you are going to be in charge one way or another, and B. this is your mind, and you do not like _anyone_ controlling it. The anger at your core flares up. You stomp over to Vriska. You pull out a sickle and walk directly up to her. You put your sickle near her throat in an explicitly threatening motion. "Don't, do it, again. Or…" at which point you enter into a rant which is practically intranscribeable because a good portion of it is essentially gibberish, and the rest does not conform to any known law of grammar. The only part which makes any sense is the bit at the end which is just you saying, "So don't even try it!" in a tone that suggests that you are almost out of breath and want to finish your sentence without taking another breath, and are also extremely angry.

When you stormed over to her, she seemed surprised, but her expression has changed to one that suggests that she thinks you're completely harmless and she finds you amusing.

"Sure," she says in a voice which clearly says to all listening that she will try that again, when she gets the chance. Still, she definitely didn't expect you to break out of that. Maybe you never did before, and you somehow doubt that anyone has ever gotten into her face and shouted at her. Looks like you got rid of one of the only people standing in your way.

"First find true anger, and only then shall you find true peace." – Troll Gandhi

(You are absolutely certain that troll Gandhi said that.)


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Your name is…

Your name is Terezi. You don't remember your last name yet, but you believe you will. You have just built a house, if such an optimistic word can be applied to a box of dirt with a door in it. Tavros helped a good deal, especially once you figured out how to use the matter manipulator, and got a pickaxe. The dirt smells okay, you guess, albeit kind of sour, and a little bitter. The trees are better. You're assuming they're trees, even though they have massive thornsand very few branches. They're a rich bluish purple, which smells exceptionally sweet. They're hard to avoid, too, since there are so many. You appear to be in a forest. You like this place. (Maybe you've had experience with forests before?)

Tavros walks around the corner of the house, carrying an axe. One of the monsters that tried to attack the two of you follows him, docile and friendly. He tosses you some of the wood he got. Apparently, the trees do work as far as wood goes.

The others suddenly appear, suddenly appearing out of a clear sky. Most of them are carrying a weapon. You notice that a few, namely Vriska, Equius, and Sollux, are not. Of those carrying something, a few strike you as a bit off, Eridan's bow and arrows, for a start, or Kanaya's machete thing. A lot of them seem to fit though, like Feferi's double trident.

Karkat seems very pleased with himself. You guess that he has taken control. He looks at the house with a blank look, and then seems to put it from his mind.

"Terezi, pass me the thing," he says.

"Which thing?" you say, smiling infuriatingly. At least, it makes Karkat angry.

"You know perfectly well which thing," he says, then, decides to clarify in case you try anything else, which you were planning on, "the stuff pusher, or whatever it's called."

"Would that be the matter manipulator?" you say, pulling it out.

"YES!" he says, in the way someone might say "FINALLY!", then more evenly, "That is exactly what I was talking about, pass it over," then, grudgingly, "Please."

Well, how can you resist that demeanor that is so, what's the word? (Adorabloodthirsty, definitely) Anyway, you toss the thing over.

Karkat takes it, and turns around to the bunch of trolls. "I don't care what you call this," he yells, "the important part is that I left it with Terezi earlier so she could find out what it does." He looks at you and tosses the thing back. "Which is what?"

Well, he never asked you to find out, but whatever, you know what it does. "It can break things," you say, "and it can put things down. It's really pretty obvious."

Karkat steps back up. "More importantly, we have a job to do. We have to survive. So, our first job is to make shelter, and then to get food." He begins shouting instructions, telling one person to do this and another to do that.

This might take a while.

You are now Gamzee

Nevermind, you don't want to be Gamzee; the guy's head is like a bag of some small furry animal. Suffice to say he's not feeling well.

You are instead Eridan.

You are angry, perhaps even furious. Vriska was totally into your power struggle thing up there, and you were gunning for being the team-captain, or whatever the term is, which is obviously what should happen since you are nearly the highest blood-color here, besides Feferi, who, well. You came up against that earlier, which was why you didn't bring it up. (Blood colors? What are you even thinking about?) And then Karkat just _had_ to teleport up and start yelling, and you got completely forgotten, which is stupid, because you matter, and to hell with anyone who thinks otherwise.

In which case, to hell with Karkat, you have a bow, and you're itching to try it. You may not even come back, you think. (You wouldn't, except, these are the only people you know. That's enough of a reason in and of itself.)

You are still Eridan, later that day. You have just killed a lot of wild animals, and collected their meat, which is assuaging the fear you were having of going back and looking like you're being lazy. It also makes you feel better than if they didn't drop anything, and just seemed to disintegrate, (like they have anyway), without leaving anything.

You realize it's getting cold, and return to your landing site, carrying all the meat you acquired over the course of the day. As you get near, you see a fire, burning in the middle of a ring of what appear to be houses of the same design as what you saw when you first came down. They're nothing more than boxes, with doors.

Standing by the fire, on a small mound of dirt, is Karkat, who is yelling instructions at the others. They keep arguing, and don't seem to worry about what he thinks, until he yells at them, anyway.Really, though, everything's functioning.

Karkat notices you. He walks over to you. He says, in a voice which can only be described as a snarl, "Where the hell were you? We need all hands on deck."

You roll your eyes, but otherwise do your best to ignore what you're certain is a joke about you. (You don't even know why, but whatever) Still, he's given you a perfect opening to excuse your absence.

"I wwas out huntin'," you say, "Not that I'd expect you to care."

"Oh really?" He says, "Did you find anything edible?"

"Plenty," you say, as if you don't care. "More'n you could go through in a feww days, at least."

Then he says, suddenly angry, or at least _angrier_, "Then how is it that we haven't been able to get any, we've killed whole herds of these little fire-spewing _things_," (Yeah, you killed huge numbers of them, you would guess they're the indigenous life of the planet.)and we've barely gotten anything at all. Why is it that you are the only person who can get anythinguseful?!" By the end of this he's grabbing you by the collar.

You honestly have no idea why you got meat and he didn't. You swat his hands off of you, and say, "Howw the hell should I knoww?! Been wweighin' on your mind, has it?"

"Yeah, I guess there's something about the possibility of everyone dying of starvation that makes it hard to not think about- OF COURSE IT HAS BEEN! Get cooking." When you hesitate, he shouts, "GET TO WORK!" and turns away, shaking his head, muttering to himself.

Despite your numerous minor injuries, you get to work, telling yourself that if it comes to it, you can blame him for not asking if you were injured. Behind you, you hear Karkat yelling at someone to make an extra house. Apparently, they didn't think it was worthwhile to make one for someone who wasn't there.

Finally, as the sun is going down, and things are getting too dark to see, Karkat finally says, voice hoarse from yelling, that you can go to sleep. You don't pay attention, as you're too busy heading to the thing that you won't call a house, but if you had stayed up, you would have seen that a goodly portion were staying up for a bit, for one reason or another. Like Equius who barely stays out for a half minute, or Nepeta, who has apparently been itching to try out those claws all day. Kanaya apparently doesn't feel tired. The list goes on, but you miss all of it, because you just felt like staggering in, and collapsing on the wooden framework, which has only the barest padding.

You are now Gamzee.

A lone troll sits in a cave. He can't sleep, despite being bone tired. He can't eat, despite being starving. He is cold, but has no way to warm himself. He is miserable, but for some reason, he isn't dead.

You are him.

"I know you're there," he says, chuckling hysterically. "Really, there never was a time you weren't there, I was just too blind to notice." His laughing picks up, "I can hear you now, copying me, talking about me." He is no longer laughing, but talking quietly, as if coming to a realization, "but I don't need you here, I can do whatever I want." He sits in silen- "SO GET OUT!"

You are now nobody, empty space, there is literally nobody you can be. You skip to morning.

You can be anyone… Well, almost anyone- Well, almost anyone who is awake- Okay, fine, you can only be Aradia right now.

You are now Aradia.

You are the first one awake. You walk outside, straight into a group of large hairy creatures. You wonder whether they are docile or hostile, until one charges straight at you. You pick it up and slam it into the ground until it vanishes, leaving behind little golden cubes.

After you do the same to a few of the others, the ones that are left run off, and you are standing alone in the middle of camp. Well, that was odd. You didn't even realize you were telekinetic until just then, but using that kind of ability certainly feels normal to you. You wonder what else it can do.

Well, for one thing, you can feel the shape of things around you. That doesn't really help you, because you can't go much further than you can see, at least, further than you can see with all these trees around. Unless…

You search the ground below you, and find a wealth of important knowledge about the planet you are on; you find its layers of soil and its rocks and small pockets of air. You also find copper, iron, coal, and a few pieces of silver, and you would be willing to guess that there's more below the layer of plant matter, in the bedrock. Locating one of the largest deposits, you begin to pull out neat blocks of dirt, and put them beside the newly created hole. In a remarkably short time you have acquired a good deal of ore. You also make a furnace. How you're doing this, you have no idea, but it's working.

Not long after, people start waking up. First awake is Karkat, looking like he might collapse any second. He doesn't, though, and when you tell him what you're doing, he grumbles at you to mine out the rest of the ore in camp. He's not angry, you don't think; he's just doesn't like getting up early.

The rest get up at various times, a few like Karkat, clearly tired, a few less so. Kanaya, for instance, apparently didn't sleep at all.

Not to be outdone is Vriska, who walks out later, near last, actually. The moment she steps outside something slams into the ground at her feet, and then another, and another. After a half minute, maybe, and she leans down and picks them up. After a second of considering them, she throws them in the air, confirming what you thought. They're dice. You also think that Vriska was facing you when she threw them in the air; probably not intentionally, your furnace is in the middle of the clearing. Still, you think those dice are for more than just playing games with. You know, instinctively or not, that they are dangerous.

The dice land. You don't see what the roll was, because they're too small, but you do see something flicker into existence, flying at your throat. You also see it stop, in midair, and then burn away.

That was either the clumsiest assassination attempt you've ever been part of, or an accident. You're inclined to go with the latter, as there wasn't really a way for Vriska to know what the dice did, well, maybe, anyway.

Whatever the case, she wasn't nearly fast enough; you felt like you had all the time in the world, like you were made of time! You can't help but find that funny, and then you realize why it _is_ funny. You _were_ maid of time.

The title reverberates through your head, and you get slapped across the face with a bunch of your old memories.

While you were standing there, having an epiphany for all of 2 seconds, Karkat walked over to Vriska and began yelling at her. She's arguing back, of course, taking the tack that since she didn't mean harm, and no harm came of it, she's done nothing wrong. You sit back and watch the fireworks.

You are now Karkat.

"THAT IS NOT THE POINT!" you continue, "Just because she's alive doesn't mean you didn't put her in danger! Just keep those dice locked up unless there is an actual enemy around! That's it, it's that simple!"

"_Fine_, I'll be very careful," she says, and the way she says it tells you that she's not taking it seriously, but at least if she tries this again, you have witnesses that she's done this before.

Grumbling, you turn to the crowd of trolls. Everyone's here. Good, that means you can get started. "First: the good news, we're all alive, and we have food," you begin. You pull out some of the cooked meat from last night. "Of course, our source of food is uncertain, until we can grow our own, or find a reliable way to get the stuff from animals," you continue, "this isn't even mentioning the fact that our resident idiot clown has gone missing." You stayed up last night planning, and you could never figure out what to do about Gamzee. "However," you say, "We will get him back. For that, though, we need someone to go after him, and I have decided to handle this personally." You look around, daring them to object. Someone does, oddly.

"Um, how are you going to find him?" You've barely heard Nepeta talk before this, so it comes as kind of a surprise that she's speaking up now.

"I don't know, but I don't intend to just sit here and _hope_ he comes back," you say, "do you have a better idea?"

"He went that way," says Nepeta, pointing in an apparently random direction, "I don't know where he went from there, I didn't go that far out."

"And how do you know that?" you say.

"He didn't make any effort to hide his tracks," she says, "I'll show you if you want."

"…Fine." You say. "Later."

"Anyway; Kanaya and Aradia, you two are going exploring. Find a hill or something, scout out the surrounding area, and mine for more stuff." Thinking about it, you realize that you don't want Vriska staying here, because you're certain that if you leave her here, she'll take over and kill you on sight. "Vriska, you go with them."

As an afterthought you add, "Feel free to loot anyone you come across." Just in case, of course, but you could use a leg up as far as survival goes.

To the rest of them, you say, "If you're not leaving, you're staying here and working around the camp. Make somewhere better than boxes to live in, plant something, figure out what's with animals that makes it near-impossible to get anything edible, I don't care, just make it better when we get back than when we left. That is all, any questions?" Once again, you didn't expect a response, but someone still responds.

"Far be it from me to object," says Equius in the low rumble that is his voice, "but the high-… _Gamzee_ left looking rather odd, perhaps unstable. Are you certain that you can handle him alone in his current state?"

You somehow doubt that that'll be a problem, but, something about his tone makes you uncertain. "Are you offering to come along?" you ask, "Because, if so, you are. In fact, you know what? I am _ordering_ you to come after Gamzee right now, at this time, and I will hear no argument against it."

He looks taken aback at that, but just says "Yes," as if that's even a proper response. You fear you've made a horrible mistake.

That's everyone sorted out, about as well as you can do. Still, you have a few things left to figure out; who to leave in charge, for instance. You honestly aren't sure about Eridan. Feferi might work, but who knows how her apparent friendship with Eridan might affect things, so you might end up with the same problem. Sollux is, well, not fit for the job really. He's way too angry about stupid things, and some gut instinct tells you that you can't count on his reactions being logical like yours. You aren't even sure Nepeta's staying here. Tavros is flat out unconscionable. That leaves Terezi. Well, she did follow you down quickly, and she's certainly no idiot. Terezi it is, then.

You quickly tell her that she's in charge, and, while she's obviously not thrilled, she accepts. You get food for the exploration team, and for yourself. Finally, you head over to Nepeta, and tell her to point you towards Gamzee.

"Well," she begins, "He obviously started here, since this is where everyone landed." Makes sense, "and there's a trail heading that way, and none of us headed that way," what trail?

"Wait, what are you talking about, since when is there a trail there?" You interject.

"You can't tell?" she says, pointing at an apparently blank section of ground. You don't, but whatever. "He was right here."

"There's nothing there," you say. "I'm starting to think you're making this up."

Nepeta stands up, takes a step back, and says, her voice like the crack of a whip, "Listen! Just because you haven't had sweeps of experience tracking prey doesn't mean I haven't," she says.

"What are you talking about?" you ask. Even as you ask, you get the feeling she's right.

She doesn't even hesitate. "I don't know. Does it matter?"

"Yes, I can't help but agree," comes Equius' voice from behind you. (How is someone that massive so quiet?)

You spin around. Equius is just sort of standing there, visible eye and the area below it tinted with blue. Has he just been standing there the whole time, watching?

(Hell with it) You sigh "Fine, we'll take your path, Nepeta." You steel yourself for the next bit, "And… I can't track Gamzee alone, so I'm going to need you to come along."

She just smiles, anger apparently forgotten.

You get walking.

You are now Vriska.

You are busy, planning, scheming. Whatever you do, you're going to want to be held in high regard before you try it, and taking credit for any loot you find is going to be the first step, or perhaps letting the others have some credit will make the others regard you as a good person. Better yet, make it obvious that you got it, but are just being humble. Whatever you do, though, you can't fade into the background. As you scheme, you're grabbing whatever you can. After a few minutes, you're ready to go. You walk outside.

Minutes in the future, though only a few:

You are now Sollux.

You asked for a few minutes before you got to work, because you had an idea. You've felt something missing, besides your memories. You saw Aradia excavating with psychic power. It reminds you of something you used to do, as much as you remember anything.

Now, things are flying around you like a storm. You can't keep yourself from laughing, in what most people would call a cackle.

Slowly, you become aware of Terezi standing in front of your cloud of 'p2iioniic energy' simply standing there, waiting for you to calm down. After a bit, you realize that you should probably stop with the light show. Even as you think this, bits of the storm shred off like fabric and dissipate into the air. Eventually, it's just you standing there. For a second you stand there, grinning like a madman, and then you collapse.

After a time, you realize that you are sitting in utter calm. Even as you realize this, the calm breaks, and you sit bolt upright. You are lying, or sitting, currently, in one of those things you were sleeping in. You see Feferi sitting off to your side, in a simple chair. You smile.

"Hey, FF," you say.

"Hi," she says, with a smile.

Your name is Sollux Captor, and you suddenly understand everything

"The waking world is not that of the dreamer. Those awake see the object, those asleep know its nature" - Saying found on a cave wall on Alternia


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: You are now…

You walk briskly through the forest, barely stopping when attacked, or when one of you friends asks you to. Your job hasn't come into play, as night hasn't fallen.

You follow, climbing hills, seeing the larger stone hills ahead. You aren't the only following, one is walking along, closer behind the one leading you.

You sit up, and begin to speak evenly. They sit in silence, waiting for you to explain everything. This is going to take quite a while.

You wait. They'll find you. There's no way they won't. You just know that they're following you now, and there's no way you won't find you. You could run, but you don't feel like it. You-

-are now Kanaya. No, that transition was not an accident, you meant to be someone else just then. Anyway, you come out of that completely sensible segue. You have climbed a massive hill, which you saw from a distance had no trees at the top. Finally, at the top, you see something. Along with the surrounding terrain, you see a large building, or perhaps a complex of small buildings, the distance makes it hard to tell. The others see it too, you know. Aradia begins talking quickly to you, and out of the corner of your eye, you see a smile curl across Vriska's face. She's going to be a nightmare.

"I don't suppose you could give me a second?" you ask. You need to remember the landscape. Aradia nods and quiets down.

Near you, you see the forest. Further away, you see, in one direction, plains, covered in something greenish-grey that is either grass or sand. In the other, you see hills, and eventually mountains. Looking up shows a blue sky, barely broken up by a cloud, here and there.

You turn back to the others. "Okay, I think I have it." you say. You all know where you're going next.

You are now Karkat.

You are so done with everything. You are bored enough that you start practicing with your sickle.

You are now Sollux Captor

You begin simply. "You should know all of this, but, for some weird reason, you can't." You smile. "Okay," you say, then continue, "I guess I'll start with Sgrub. Sgrub was, or is, a program…"

You are now Gamzee.

Against all odds, you try to be Gamzee again.

You stand atop a cliff, looking down. You can just make out figures in the distance. You don't know who all of them are, but you think you know who one is, if only because your belief has to be making it a good deal less fake. You are too distracted to notice the narration in your mind. "Not necessarily," you-

-hear Vriska say something about how she is going to tear the people in the building apart. Of course she doesn't even care about talking to the first people you meet on this planet. Certainly, you were told that you could loot, but that doesn't mean you can't learn more about the planet first.

"I don't suggest that we do that," you say, not looking back at her.

"As I recall, we were told that we could loot whatever we wanted from anyone we found," says Vriska, her voice making it obvious that she's quoting.

You turn around to face Vriska. "Listen," you say, "I am aware that we were told we could take what we wanted, but I'm not entirely sure that we should."

She raises her eyebrows, "Really?" she says, "and why is that?"

"Because we don't know anything!" you say, not quite shouting, "Who knows what they could tell us?"

She still seems unconvinced, so you say, almost pleadingly, "I can't stop you, I suppose, but could you at least wait until I've spoken to them?"

Aradia joins in, "I've never been one for people, I don't think, but we might as well."

Vriska shakes her head exasperatedly, but says "Fine."

You finally arrive at the building, coincidentally near what looks suspiciously like a front door. You walk up, and see someone, presumably a guard, in dark clothes, carrying something that looks suspiciously like a gun. You have a bad feeling about this, but head towards them anyway. "Hello?" you ask. (Didn't even consider language, why didn't you-)

"_Area prohibited, leave the premises now," _comes a harsh metallic voice from the figure; definitely a guard.

You should probably back up, but you can't help trying once more. "I'm not trying to-"

Shock is your first feeling. Followed by an instant of pain, and then you are dead.

You are now Karkat.

You came out of the forest, finally, into a clearing. Ahead and above, you see the entrance to a cave. There isn't much you can do besides follow Nepeta up the slope. Equius brings up the rear.

Inside, the cave is empty, apparently, but you feel a creeping fear that… Just a creeping fear. You pull out your sickle.

In an instant, Nepeta and Equius are gone. Is this Gamzee? How could that idiotic clown have done anything like that? You hear a voice, like Gamzee's but not nearly as calm and friendly. "Just you and me now." Does that mean that he just-? "Didn't kill 'em," he says as if reading your mind, "'Might, though, unless you can, heh, _persuade_ me otherwise," he begins laughing, cackling, maybe. It sounds like something out of one of those stupid horror movies you didn't remember watching until now. Persuade him? Fine, he asked for it, and ask and ye shall receive, or be killed; so goes the Alternian saying.

"Where are you?" you ask, voice steady.

He steps into view with a lopsided grin, two clubs, thankfully not bloodstained, swinging in his hands. He takes a step towards you, eyes downcast, clubs still spinning. He could kill you at his leisure, but he isn't. Why? Well, you know why, but not the deeper, _underlying_ why. Well, ask and you shall receive, or be killed. You don't intend to kill him, though. You drop your sickle. You run forward, unarmed, towards a troll that could kill you any second. He isn't moving.

Finally, as you near him, he looks up, eyes a burning red.

Let's give them some space, shall we?

You are now Sollux.

You are in the middle of saying, "After something like that, he never stood a chance. Anyway, that guy was the final boss, so we had just won the game, all we had to do was go through the door to this new universe I was telling you about."

You are now… Well, nobody is really doing anything interesting. They're either with Sollux, who is telling a story that is redundant to many, or Karkat, who at this point is kind of in the middle of something, or, well, okay, you are now Vriska.

You are in a white-walled room, utterly demolishing guards and robots. Aradia is presumably helping, but you are too busy with your dice to notice her. You plow through the room, your 20-somethingth thus far, practically untouched. You just know there is going to be loot in here, there's no way there isn't, it just wouldn't make sense otherwise. You expect there to be a long night of dungeon-crawling ahead, and of looting every dead body, (and of bloody violence that doesn't translate well into text.) Oh, and also, they killed Kanaya back at the door, so you're also getting revenge for that.

You realize that you can be Kanaya.

You are now Dead Kanaya.

This was a mistake, you have even lost the ability to do anything with the narrative. You lie there and decompose for a while, and then exist as nothing more than some atoms floating around, doing nothing, forever.

Psyche.

The narrative is fine, and oddly, so is Kanaya.

You are now Kanaya.

For now, you are just lying here. You don't want to think, you're too comfortable just lying here. Despite this, thought returns, bit by bit, minute by minute. With thought returns your memory like a space in your head filled, giving you a bit more context about your surroundings. Your name is Kanaya Maryam, and you need to get up.

You stand up, despite the fact that your spinal column was probably split by the bullets, most of which went straight through you. Feeling your back, you feel both a broken spinal cord, and a ruined outfit. It's the only one you have, too, which might be a bit annoying.

You look around. Despite your dark surroundings, you see that the door to the facility is open, white light shining out. The guard is nowhere to be seen. The pieces all slot together, saying that the other two went into that facility. Did they kill the guard? Maybe. One way or another, you're following them. You run through the open door.

Ah, it appears Nepeta and Equius have regained consciousness, and Karkat and Gamzee have finished.

You are now Nepeta.

Fragments of memory and spinning through your head, going in all directions, like, you grab a simile off the top of your head, like a whole herd of some animal scattering when a predator gets close. You saw part of the end of the thing with Karkat and Gamzee. Didn't Gamzee knock you out? Or did he get captured by the thing that did. How did the thing get Equius? Speaking of Equius, you can hear him shifting around now.

You are now Equius

Your name is Equius Zahhak. Your memories have slotted together like gears in a well-tuned, well oiled, machine, though it may be oiled with sweat, and nobody wants to know what it does. Along with your memory, you have regained your interest in fine art, to the extent that you will make your own if need be, and you now consciously remember how much you love being strong. Your mind wanders back to more recent memories, such as how you got here. You were struck, and then brought here. Looking up, you see Karkat and Gamzee talking almost conversationally, but Karkat seems subdued, maybe a bit less angry. As for Gamzee… Well, he seems as you recall him, despicable as always, but wasn't it him who took you out? Could it be that he is beginning to accept his lineage? The very thought sends a shiver through your body. Your thoughts stray on to what would happen next... Oh god no. No! You are done here. You are never being Equius again.

You are now Gamzee. You are feeling chiller than some poor bastard as has been put on ice, as you would say. You don't even notice a narrative going through your head. You were feeling angry earlier, but hey, things change. Your best friend helped you out, even gave you something to eat and started up a fire. You notice a few people waking up. Did you really knock them out? Seems like a bad dream, but everything's all right now.

"Hey! What is up?!" you call to Nepeta and Equius.

Equius looks up, disappointment in his face. He say something under his breath

Nepeta seems to be taking the question more seriously. "I'm not sure," she says, tilting her head. "Wouldn't you know better than me?"

You laugh, "Well I bet I would. The idea is that we're sleepin' here tonight, and headin' back to, uh, wherever you guys came from, tomorrow."

"And I assume that you shall be traveling with us?" asks Equius.

"Well I don't see why not," you respond, shrugging.

You look over at where Karkat is sealing the tunnel with dirt, using some miraculous little machine. He even sets a door in the opening, and starts on a few beds.

You reckon that this is going to be a nice day. Or night, or whatever. This place is kind of weird.

You are now Sollux.

You just got everyone up to speed. Well, as much as you are, anyway. There's still a lot you don't know. For instance, how did you end up in a spaceship above this planet? Where is this planet? Where did the spaceship come from, why can't you remember?

"This is all, well, incredible," says Tavros, "but shouldn't we be, uh, sleeping? Or something? It is getting dark out."

"Well," you say, "we're nocturnal, so not really."

"Oh," is all he says.

Terezi then says "He has a point actually. As much as I love to hear all of this, we do have other things we should be doing. We were told to 'improve the camp', so we might as well do that.

It doesn't take long.

You are now Kanaya.

You have been going through this facility for a while, and have only now started hearing sounds of conflict. There is a reason you haven't caught up earlier. For one thing, they had a pretty big head start, and for another, you haven't been hurrying; since you lost your chance to talk, you're trying to make up for it by looking around. You've seen a lot. The place seems to be run by some kind of overlord. You can't read the text, but what you're seeing doesn't look promising. Maybe your best chance really _was_ to fight. Anyway, you speed up your pace so you can catch up with Vriska and Aradia.

Turns out they were in the next room along. They aren't fighting, though, they were trying to get through some sort of trap. It looks like Vriska was trying to shoot out the lightning spewing traps with a gun that looks suspiciously like the one the guard had. Aradia seems to be ripping them out of the walls.

They don't hear you come in, so you just stand there, watching. After almost a minute of standing there, Aradia turns around, spots you, and… Nothing, barely a response. Then, she smiles, and says, "Hi Kanaya."

Vriska is less calm, and much more surprised by the fact that you are alive. You don't blame her, except that, with your memory back, you know that she's seen stranger. She doesn't remember it though, so the point is moot.

For a second, nobody talks, and the only sound is the crackling of electricity. Then, you say "What are you doing?" just as she says, "How are you alive."

"I'm not sure that I am," you say. "I believe that I may have actually died."

After a remarkably short time spent getting over the fact that you are still going, despite being killed, only ten or twenty seconds, Aradia turns back to her work of ripping out the electric traps. A few seconds after that, Vriska joins her. You feel a bit out of the flow of things, if you're being honest. You weren't involved in this until just a bit ago.

Looking up after a solid minute of thought, you see that they've only just cleared out one frame of the electric things. That must be why you caught up so quickly. Looking to the next one though, you see a gap in it, as if it's meant to be passable to a suitably agile person. Well, you _have_ felt different since you died, or whatever it was, faster, stronger, kind of like your body has removed any limiters. That would be a scary thought if you stopped to think about it, but you aren't thinking about it right now, you're diving through the gap in the criss-crossing tendrils of lightning. You land, safely, on the other side. The next one is higher up, but there's a platform floating in midair near it.

For the next minute or so, you bypass these traps, until, finally, you land in an area with no traps ahead. You see two things; a treasure chest, and a button set into the wall. The only question is whether to use the button or open the chest first.

Reasoning that you don't know what the button does, but the treasure chest is an open book, as meaning goes, you open the chest. Inside, you find one or two weapons that look suspiciously like upgrades to your current ones, well, besides the chainsaw. No, actually, you would bet anything that you're supposed to have the chainsaw, (especially since you remember using chainsaws,) but it was too powerful (Not that that makes any sense, unless this is another game, like Sgrub). The 'Useless Whappystick' is pretty clearly a cane, which you'll be giving to Terezi as soon as you get back. You also find a pair of, apparently useless, red shoes, something that marks itself as a 'tech upgrade,' whatever that is, 450 of those golden cubes, which are apparently called 'pixels,' and a whistle. You also find one or two classified looking documents, and something marked as "Ship key… Beta Planet"

Now having the treasure, you press the button. All that happens is that the traps fizzle out. Well, that answers that question. The return journey should be much easier, and you should be able to discuss what to do with the loot on the way, except, looking at Aradia and Vriska, you get the feeling that they won't be going anywhere tonight.

Everyone is either sleeping, or will be shortly. Maybe morning would be a good time to get back to them.

Time is the most subjective force, passing by in fits and starts – Anonymous greenblooded infant


	4. Chapter 4, Part 1

Chapter 4, Part 1: Land already

It is now morning, and you are assaulted with a barrage of people that you could be. Everyone is awake, and doing _something_.

You are now Terezi.

You aren't really the right kind of person to be in charge. You get the feeling that you've never been a leader, more of a manipulator. Nevertheless, you are quietly supervising the building. You put Sollux on the slowly rising walls of the thing that can be called a house, because boxes do not come in sizes that big. He is, in fact, the reason that the walls are rising. Eridan is also on top of the walls, shooting anything that gets near. By now, you have more meat than you could eat in a week. Feferi and Tavros are inside, dividing the house into floors, making stairs, and so on, although Tavros seems more interested in trying to traverse stairs than building them. You are walking around, looking for gaps in the walls, collecting everything dropped by the animals Eridan kills, and gently pushing everyone to keep working.

Like now, actually.

"It almost killed me!" yells Sollux.

"Oh, right, a' course you don't evven comment on the fact that I'vve killed hundreds by noww, and that wwas the only one to get through!" says Eridan

"Yeah, well, I'm making a house, and you don't see me bragging about how I only blew up one wall," responds Sollux.

You walk up the stairs in the house, to get to what is currently the roof.

By the time you get to the top, you're surprised that Sollux and Eridan aren't making out yet. As it is, their faces are mere inches from each other, and Sollux is sparking.

They've passed the part where they scream at each other, and have gotten to the part where they're menacing each other in quiet voices that tell you that you got here just in time.

Sadly, this is kind of counterproductive to the work. Actually; now that you think about it, the house is basically done. You have plenty of rooms, so really, there's no reason to interrupt them.

"You really think you can make me stop talkin'?" snarls Eridan.

"I bet I can think of something," says Sollux in the same tone.

You roll your eyes. Even you know that that is the most clichéd line in all of pitchrom fiction, and you don't even have your memory back.

That's really all there is to say on the subject of you working.

You are now Equius, against your better judgment.

You, Karkat and… Gamzee? The Highblood? Never mind, this is confusing you. Making it worse is that just as Gamzee started to display what you recall as the correct disposition of a highblood, he was immediately calmed down, and worse, he was calmed down by someone whose blood is almost certainly rust-colored, or some equally hideous color. The scandal would be tremendous if this had happened on Alternia. You aren't on Alternia, though, and you get the sneaking suspicion that Karkat saved not only _your_ life, but also Nepeta's.

That problem solved, you keep walking.

Wait, weren't you thinking about something before that tangent? Oh, right. The three of you are following Nepeta, who is the only one that is really reliable as far as knowing the path home goes. Your mind wanders, thinking, not about anything actively horrible, but about how the morality of that situation works, especially with your particular values.

You are now Vriska.

Aradia just vanished, and it is _not_ your fault. She used that thing that teleports you to the ship. You haven't used yours yet, because you don't need to. As you understand it, she couldn't keep up with you and Kanaya. You're only fast enough because you got a speed boost from your dice. Of course, running is boring you, because there's nothing to do.

You are now Aradia.

You are up in the ship. You don't really have anything to do, and you're still out of breath from all that running, so you head up to the pilot's seat. This is much more interesting. You see whole panels of what appear to be various instruments. One is a sphere with something that appears to be the ship in the middle, and an arrow facing down, towards the planet. Maybe where gravity is pulling you? Another is of a similar kind, but without the arrow. It's simply the ship floating in the middle of a sphere. Nothing happens for a few seconds, until, you spot a small shape, a line, appear in the sphere. It's moving directly towards the ship. You reach out a finger and poke the shape. A box of text pops up. It says "Missile, on collision course. Approximate time until arrival: 30 seconds. Damage to ship: destruction. Missiles fired: 2. Targets: ship, unknown. Suggested course of action: Evacuate immediately."

You're lucky that you read quickly, because that timer is ticking and you've got maybe ten seconds until the ship is hit. You dash to the teleporter, aware of seconds ticking away one at a time. You reach the teleporter with 4 or 5 seconds left. You manage to activate it with a bit of time to spare.

You are now on the planet. You see what appears to be almost a house. You also see the rest of the trolls. It seems that Karkat is making a speech. This would be comforting if you didn't get the feeling that you are about to have to deal with a falling spaceship. Or two, you remember the second missile. Ordinarily, you would have just lost the ship, but you know what you saw, and you saw some mention of some sort of thrusters on the underside of the ship, presumably to counter gravity, which implies to you that the ship is going to fall.

You walk up to the group, and are saved the trouble of interrupting by Karkat saying, "Aradia, good of you to join us," in a tone dripping with so much sarcasm it's kind of disgusting, "finally. Where were you?"

"I was on the ship," you say, "And it's going to fall on us."

Karkat seems taken aback, both by the news, and your still cheerful tone. "What?" he asks, his eyes jumping upward.

"It was hit by a missile. I managed to get out before it hit, but when I say it's going to fall, I'm not joking." She pauses, "We could get underground, I guess."

A few people are looking at the sky now, and you see Karkat's eyes widen, and you know he's seeing the burning light of a ship entering the atmosphere involuntarily. "Sollux!?" he yells. Sollux seems to understand, in that way that only works when there is only one possible answer, well, two, but he's taking your advice, rather than trying to hold back the ship. Dirt fountains out of the ground, and then rocks, and it's all going so fast. You see Sollux through the panic of the others, and you just know that he's bleeding from the eyes. There's no way he isn't.

Still, after a second, he stops, and you feel a slam of energy hauling you towards the hole. In an instant, you, and everyone else, except possibly Sollux, it's too dark to tell, is inside. No, Sollux isn't inside, or wasn't anyway. You see him dive in. For a second, nothing happens, and then you feel a sound like the world shattering, and you fall.

"_Sometimes things just break…" –Introduction to 'How to not be Culled for Being Useless'_


	5. Chapter 4, Part 2

Chapter 4, Part 2: Descend

You are now Karkat.

You return to consciousness without noticing that you left it. For a second, you aren't sure what happened, and then you remember. The ship crashed. You remember the burning white light of something being heated to temperatures it wasn't designed for. The light in your mind resolves itself into a light that you are actually seeing. A glow is coming from nearby. Looking around for the source, you see it is coming from Kanaya. So, Kanaya's glowing. Sure, why not, nothing seems impossible at this point. Even as you watch, she shivers, and sits up.

"Well that was unexpected," she says. Always the understatement with Kanaya. If you weren't so shaken up, you might yell, or even roll your eyes. As it is, you just mumble agreement.

Where is everyone? They were here, weren't they?

In the glow from Kanaya, you look around, and see a figure with long, twisting horns. You nudge the slumbering Gamzee with a foot. He rolls over, and opens his eyes, as if waking from a good dream. He says something, but you're too busy being relieved to know what.

You cast around one last time to check if anyone else is nearby. You see one last figure. You can't be sure without getting closer, but is that…? A single bluish spark flares. You guess Sollux is still alive. He rolls over onto his back. His head turns towards you. His eyes open. You take a step back by reflex. His eyes are gone. All that's left is blood. A lot of blood. He opens his mouth to speak, and teeth come out, he must have hit his face on a rock. After a few seconds on both of your parts, him spitting out teeth and blood, and you emptying your stomach onto the floor at the sight of it (Contrary to what you want people to believe, that is not a sight you enjoy seeing), he speaks. "I'm still alive?" The ordinary lisp is gone. "…Can't believe it. I die like it's going out of style; like some kind of-"

You cut him short, of course.

"Dying's always out of style, idiot. Shut it with your hatred of the horrors of survival, we have people to find." Thus is the upside of vomiting, you always seem to feel at least a little bit better after doing it.

"Oh, so it's you I was hearing," says Sollux. He sighs, "I'm probably not the best for searching. I can't see anything."

He's obviously right, but that doesn't mean you're going to just leave it at that. "Aradia could feel rocks in the ground, can't you tell where anyone is?"

"No," he says, "I can't, alright? If you had any memory, you'd know that psionics are weird. If you even thought, you'd notice that Aradia has much more control over hers than I do over mine."

Kanaya picks now to be sensible, and says, "This tunnel only really goes one way. We might as well begin searching for the others. I doubt they have gone far." She begins walking down the tunnel. You are about to follow, when in a sudden display of thoughtfulness, likely fueled by the unforgettableness of his mangled eyes, you realize that Sollux has no idea where you're going, and can't follow you anyway. You take ahold of his arm, and lead him after Kanaya. In your peripheral vision, you see Gamzee slouch his way after you.

You follow Kanaya down. Maybe you should be in front, but she's glowing, so maybe she's better suited to leading through the dark. Anyway, you've got a question. It takes you nearly two minutes to figure out how to phrase it, though.

"I don't suppose that because-"

"Of what you said we aren't friends anymore?" Sollux laughs, (It's like getting his memory back made him psychic _and_ psionic.) "KK, trust me, I don't even know what you think you said that was so horrible. So trust me, you've said worse, not that you remember it."

He snickers, a quiet, ungraceful noise. "Yet despite the fact that you can't remember anything, you still seem to think of yourself as our wise and powerful leader."

"When did I say anything like that?!" you ask.

Sollux gives you a _look_, despite not having eyes. It is disconcerting as hell. "What about, 'Stop discussing who should be leader, because it's obvious that it's me!'"

You're about to respond with your razor wit, when your train of thought is derailed.

"Where's Kanaya?" you ask, looking around.

"Seriously, you're asking me?" says Sollux.

A look ahead shows a fading glow from further down the tunnel. Well, okay, he makes a fair point, but if Kanaya isn't here, then how are you seeing? Another glance around shows torches in the walls. One final look shows Gamzee, literally right next to you. You jump, and make a most undignified sound. Gamzee doesn't seem to notice, and just puts up another torch.

In perhaps the only display of Gamzee noticing something you didn't, ever, he says, "Kanaya was sayin' that if she was to be goin' on alone, she might be movin' faster'n us."

"Oh," is all you say.

"'N' then I figured it could get a bit dark without Kanaya doin' her glowy thing," the gestures he makes to go along with 'glowy thing' are actually kind of amusing, "so I figured I better start puttin' these up," he chuckles, "and they just lights up as soon as I pull 'em out! Where'd they even _learn_ to do something like that?"

For a second you are about to answer with the rational answer about temporal freezing, but something tells you that he would just get annoyed at you. Instead you say, with clear sarcasm, "Miracles?"

"Hah! Yeah, man, not much else'd do a thing like that."

You are now Kanaya.

You've just reached the bottom of the cave. You see 7 bodies lying in various poses on the ground. Only one other person is standing. Vriska apparently went entirely uninjured by the tumble down the tunnel.

Looking around, you see that most of the others are practically uninjured as well. Eridan ended up floating in a pool of water, but you know for a fact now that he can breathe water, so he's fine. Tavros ended up with a horn caught in the soft clay of the wall, but seems otherwise unhurt. Equius seems to have dented the stone below him more than it dented him. Really, nobody seems to have been properly injured, which seems odd, given your memories of the game.

You manage to dragoon Vriska into helping you wake people up, and in literally about 40 seconds, pretty much everyone is awake. It turns out that one of Tavros' legs broke from the fall, and Terezi had something nasty happen to her arm, which is worse than it appeared at first glance, but still, it could be worse.

Finally, Karkat enters the chamber, holding on to Sollux by an arm. They appear to be arguing about which of them is worse. Not at anything, just in general.

For an instant, you wonder where Gamzee is, until you realize that he's right there, just being unobtrusive. Altogether, they arrived at what is really the exact right moment. You can't get these people back to the surface on your own.

You are now Karkat.

The trek back to the surface is long and arduous. Well, that's what you think, anyway, especially since you have to help Tavros climb. His legs aren't working well. Still, Gamzee's on his other side, and you're successfully hauling him up the pit.

Of course, that doesn't really make it any more fun, since the fact remains that you are carrying a big, heavy troll, with big, heavy horns, and big, heavy arms, and big, heavy legs. Of course, every time you want to give up you remember that you are essentially the only person suited for it, at the moment. Kanaya has to keep track of Sollux, or he'll wander into a pit or something, most of the others are injured, or just flat out unconscionable. So yeah, now it's your job to carry this guy.

Tavros has actually been silent since you yelled at him earlier for apologizing to you for being so heavy. He speaks now, though, in the tone of one with an idea, "Hey, Gamzee."

Gamzee looks over at him, "Yeah?"

"Do you remember those slam poetry sessions we used to have?" Tavros asks. (Since when does he have his memory back? Was it the fall or something? Also, since when does he not stutter? He was stuttering plenty when you talked to him earlier.)

Gamzee chuckles, "Yeah man. Then you stopped 'cause there was some big thing going down. Regi-something or other."

Regisurp. You barely slept the whole time it was underway… Then you forget whatever you just remembered.

"Well, that wasn't the, uh, _actual_ reason," says Tavros. "I was just a bit, uh, I just needed a bit to, uh, think about your suggestion."

"Suggestion?" asks Gamzee, seemingly puzzled.

"You suggested that, well you said that… I'm pretty sure your words were, 'And then make out,'"

You are extremely lucky that you weren't drinking anything just then because it would have come out of nose just then. Tavros hears the sound and his head turns back toward you, and you barely dodge the swinging horn.

Then Gamzee laughs, and says, "Oh yeah… You wanna do that?" This time you are already below the swinging arc of Tavros' horn, due to the fact that you are doubled up laughing.

"That wasn't, the, uh, idea," he says, "I was just hoping to, y'know, slam?"

"Well… I'd be down with that too," says Gamzee, "but I don't see as it's impossible to fit both into a couple minutes."

You barely manage to look back up enough to see Tavros' face being roughly the same color as his blood, and you just know that Gamzee winked. At this point, you collapse onto the ground, laughing silently.

"Well, how about we just slam?" Says Tavros.

"Man, that sounds like the best thing I ain't done in a long while," says Gamzee, as if the previous conversation didn't just happen. "Lesse…" He starts a baseline made entirely of him saying honk. The noise slowly recedes as they continue to climb, and then you realize that Gamzee is essentially walking with his arm around Tavros, and everything gets funnier. Then you realize that Gamzee is actually _capable_ of carrying Tavros on his own, and you gradually stop laughing. How strong would he even have to be to _carry_ someone like that?

Then you think about it again and start laughing. You guys were the last in the line, so you are alone in the torchlight now. You run after them.

It doesn't take long to catch up, and then your ears shut off due to how horrible they sound.

You are now Nepeta.

It hasn't been a good few days for you and getting knocked out. Twice in as many days is not a good record. First Gamzee and now a fall. Still, you haven't been _injured_ per se, and hey, your shipping wall which is probably something from your memory has a few new spots filled in, including one that you only know about because you weren't knocked out _that_ well. You're pretty sure that you woke up to the sight of Karkat stopping Gamzee from killing you and Equius, albeit you were a bit out of it at the moment.

At the moment, you have just walked out into a dingy light. It's not just because the sun is probably going down. There's a dust cloud of a dirty yellow color, presumably from the fallen ship; it must have fallen nearby. You could find it by the smoke trail, for whatever good it'd do you, but you can't see anything like this.

Oh. You just had an idea. It takes a second to get Karkat to give you the matter manipulator, but when you press him, he rolls his eyes and passes it over. You have plenty of dirt in your inventory, so you're set for this. You do an odd thing where you jump and place dirt under you at the same time, so you land higher than you started. You repeat the motion again, and again, and again. The dust slowly thins around you as you gain altitude. Suddenly, the wind shifts, and everything darkens. You cough, as the smoke engulfs you. You manage to climb a bit higher, until you are above the smoke. From up here, you can see how far the dust cloud spreads, but more important, you know where the ship fell. Now, to get down. You could break the dirt out from under you, or build a staircase around it, or _**SUDDENLY BIRD!**_ Must've snuck up on you. You can't keep your balance and fall. You thank whatever deity gave you your reflexes as you manage to slam a big chunk of dirt into the pillar. You land on it, and it knocks the breath out of you. After a few seconds of trying unsuccessfully to breathe, you look down. You aren't sure, but you think you can see the ground. You repeat the same motion, this time without the bird forcing you to do it. You definitely see the ground about ten feet below. You hop down.

"So what was that about?" Asks Karkat, who was apparently just sitting around, like everyone else.

"I was wondering where the meteor was," you say, "So I just tried to…" you gesture at the dirt tower.

"And here was me thinking you just wanted a scratching post or something," says Karkat in the tones of one who still believes this to be the case. "Anyway, it was the ship."

After he stays silent for a moment, you toss him back the matter manipulator.

He holds the thing for a second, then says "What did you see?"

Ah, there it is. A small crater, still smoking. At the bottom is the ship. No, wait, the ship was bigger. That's half the ship, still surprisingly intact. The paint is mostly seared off, it seems, leaving only faint traces of red.

Karkat jumps into the small crater, and tries to get close to the ship. It doesn't go too well, and after a few seconds, he jumps back out.

"Equius!" he shouts, "You're good with machines, aren't you? Can you fix this thing?"

"I have always considered myself something of an expert with objects of a mechanical nature, yes," Equius responds, "Of course, to fix it I would require the other half, or perhaps some sort of blueprints."

"Good, then the next thing we need to do is find the other half."

He looks around, and amends his statement, "As soon as everyone, which is to say Tavros, can properly walk again, which means that you already have a job to do, with or without the ship."

Equius nods. Karkat turns to the others. "We're staying here for the night," he says, "You three! Get us something to sleep in!" He points towards an apparently random group. Looks like he's back in his element. After he's finished giving the others orders, he turns to you, and says, "Find the other part like you found this one," he tosses you the matter manipulator…

In the end, it gets dark, and even your eyes can't spot smoke at this distance. You finally admit defeat. This time, you get down safely.

You return to a setting reminiscent of your first camp. A fire burns in the middle. Seems everyone's already asleep, except Equius, who is just sitting there, working on Tavros' legs. Tavros himself is nowhere to be found. You walk up to him.

"Hi," you say, "How's it going?"

"Hello," he says, "I would say that it is going moderately well. I remember fabricating these legs, and I must say, they were an excellent piece of mechanics." He currently has the outer 'skin' of one of the legs lying on the ground. He seems to be trying to fix it with his bare hands. Indeed, what he says next confirms this. "The problem, of course, is that I built this with precise tools designed for such work. Of course, if something was knocked loose, I certainly have the _strength_ to knock it back into place, but these pieces are often fragile, and easily bent."

You take a seat beside him. From this angle, you can see that the inside of the mechanism is patterned with little running horses, you don't pay too much attention to them, though, since you have an idea. "Equius?" you ask.

"Yes?"

"If you want, you could tell me how to fix this. I'd probably be less likely to bend something out of shape."

He considers. "Alright," he says at last, "but I must first find out what the problem is, so that I can tell you how to fix it."

"I'll wait," you say.

…_but they can be put back together." – Introduction to 'How to not be culled for Being Useless' Cont'd_


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter 5:

It is now morning.

You are now Sollux.

You slept soundly enough. Of course, you woke up tired, that's just how things work, especially when you wake up to the sound of your door opening and Karkat yelling at you. You open your eyes, or you open where your eyes _were_, anyway. You turn to the place where you heard Karkat's voice coming from.

"Get up," he says, "I need you to use the part of the ship we have to find out where the rest of it is.

You sit up, and sigh, gesturing at your eyes. "How do you expect me to do that?" you ask.

"I don't know, get someone to read it to you or something. Either you find it using the ship, or we search the planet for the rest of forever, and I'm not doing that."

"Which way is the ship?"

He grabs you and points you in the right direction. He then grabs Terezi and tells her to tell you what's going on. Probably a horrible idea, but you weren't confident about this in the first place. He takes you to the ship, which still has a working door, apparently. It's cooled down from last night, so you can actually get near it. Inside, you ask him what it looks like, and if there are any lights that are on. He affirms that there are apparently some things still intact, despite the breaking of the ship. You manage to figure out from his description that there is a monitor still working, and a keyboard still intact.

"What does the monitor show?" You ask.

After a second, Terezi says in a weird voice "It says 'enter command,' and then it says something about entering 'help', and functions." (Oh right, she's licking the screen. Well, there isn't much you can do about that.

You sit down at the controls. You can't see anything, but after feeling the keyboard for a bit, you type 'help'. "What does it say?" you ask.

He reads off a short paragraph about the various commands.

That in mind, you begin typing. If you're right, you should be able to figure out where the ship _was_, and figure out where the other piece landed from that.

You are now… Nah, whatever, you're just going to skip some time.

Okay, let's see, you are now Vriska.

You see the thing first. It's some kind of flying robot. You encountered something like it before, actually, back at that scientific facility or whatever it was. The thing spots you, next. Its forward movement stops, suddenly, and it turns towards the group. You see a bright red light at the front of it, like an eye. You see it look around and then focus on you. For what feels like an eternity, nothing happens. Then you here the crack of a gunshot and dive aside, your dice flying out of your hands.

The dice land, and you don't see what the roll is, but the robot breaks, so you guess it was pretty good. You get back up, hoping nobody saw that; it wasn't exactly the most dignified way to win a fight. Sure enough, Terezi is just standing there, leaning against a tree, conveniently unable to see the robot, but able to see you, and _conveniently _done reading off of the screen for Sollux.

"And what was that?" She asks.

"Killer robot," you say nonchalantly.

"Interesting," she says. She looks up at the sky. Then she says, "The real question is, are you going to tell the others," she says. It kind of is the real question, unfortunately, and she just asked it. You weren't, for your own reasons

"Of course I was!" You say.

"Well if that's the case, why don't you just go along and tell them?" She asks. "Don't let me keep you."

"Alright, then, I will," you say.

Now, of course, you are, because any possibility of waiting until more robots attack and looking even better because you are the only one who knows how to fight them (rather a gross exaggeration,) is overshadowed by the possibility of Terezi telling them that you kept information from them. Anyway, at least you'll get to tell the story your way.

You are now Terezi.

You smile. It's really more of a grin, but whatever. You're pretty sure you just accomplished your goal, which was essentially making Vriska do what you wanted. You know she'll be a problem in the future, even just looking at what just happened. She essentially risked the lives of everyone in the group for a chance at glory. You stopped that, and hopefully, you can stop it in future as well. Best case, you won't even have to.

Manipulation for these purposes will have to do until she finds a moirail, which is unfortunately unlikely to ever happen.

She walks off to the camp. Your smile widens, looks like what you did worked.

You sit against the tree for the next few minutes. Thankfully, you found a tree that didn't have giant thorns. This tree is really quite smooth. After a few minutes, Kanaya finds you, and tells you that it's time to go. You stand up and stretch out your back.

You are now Tavros.

You are walking through the forest. Karkat somehow put the ship into his inventory, which is odd to you because you were actually standing inside of it earlier, and it's kind of surreal to just see it vanish like that. Equius managed to fix your legs last night, which, while in some ways convenient, also meant you had to sleep all night without legs, in some kind of sleeping thing which you don't recognize from anywhere. The oddest part was that you still slept soundly, more so than usual, anyway. Your memories being back means that you remember some of the dreams that you used to have because you couldn't fit into your pod. Now that you're here, you've slept more soundly than you ever had before. Did the dreams just happen on Alternia?

Speaking of your legs, they don't seem to get tired. You don't know how they work, but they don't seem to draw any energy from you. You've been walking all day, but might have been standing still, for all you notice the movement. The boredom is even kind of a welcome change from the constant danger of the past few days. At a rough count, you have done five or six rounds of slam poetry with Gamzee, successfully avoided being killed by the few monsters that dare to mess with the group two or three times, and even managed to skewer an enemy with your lance once, before it vanished. Generally speaking, a pretty good day for you.

Of course, the day gets a good deal worse when a small group of robots, not very sophisticated robots, admittedly, but probably pretty well armed all the same, comes out of the woods. You pull your lance. Assorted weapons appear in hands. Most of the robots are broken into pieces before they even know they've found you. Seems they weren't expecting to find you here. The other robots barely manage to aim before Vriska's dice land and suddenly there's an explosion, (Which knocks you to the ground) and no more robots. When your eyes open again, Vriska is walking away from the place where the robots were, and there is strangely little loot there.

After that, though, the day goes back up to where it was before, and you walk in peace until you start getting near the ship.

You are now Karkat.

You near the ship, finally. You've been doing that all day, but now you crest a hill and actually see the thing. "Hey", you yell back at the crowd behind you, "We'll be there in a few minutes." You don't see the ship for a bit, but you do see something else.

What are these things? They seem different from the things that have attacked you previously. They seem to actually be bipedal, for one thing. They could almost be you, if not for the lack of horns and the skin color. More importantly, they are surrounding the body of your ship. You'll need to fight them for it, you just know it. Still, at least there are only a few of them, three or four, maybe.

Even though they're in a clearing, and you're pretty well concealed in the woods, one of them spots you. It walks in your direction. You pull out your sickle.

The thing opens its mouth, and you prepare for an acid spray or something, maybe fire, but instead what you hear is a voice.

"Hullo!? What manner of creature are you? Have you come peaceably, or do you aim to do battle?"

You are about to charge with your sickle, counting on the backup of the others, when you notice something. The thing is holding a mismatched pair of guns. You were never especially good at this kind of thing, but even you can tell that if you charge, those guns will finish you before you can get anywhere near the thing.

"Peaceably, I think," you say slowly. What choice do you have? A few of the others, those who actually even noticed the thing, and had weapons out, glance at each other, then keep their weapons out.

"Oh! You can speak!" The thing is apparently very happy about this, it turns to the nearest other, and yells "Ho there, Dirk! It appears these things can speak!"

(BTDubz, I'm not the best at writing the Alpha kids.)

The thing, apparently called Dirk, turns towards you. Your first impression is of a pair of triangular glasses, then of height, then you note the oddly deadpan expression, as if it sees this kind of thing every day. Then it says, "Are you and your friends going to stay in the trees all day?"

"Come on out," you say over your shoulder. A few of them leave the trees. "I said, 'COME ON OUT'" you say. In a few more seconds, everyone but Sollux is with you. Sollux, the self-blinding idiot he is, is leaning on a tree.

Still, as the aliens line up, you achieve your desired goal. 11 of you to 4 of them is a good reminder that they should not be fighting you.

"Honestly," you say, "I'm not having small talk with a bunch of aliens, so I'm just going to say this once,-"

"(Yeah, right)," comes a whisper behind you.

"We want your ship, and we're taking it."

"You want our ship," says Dirk.

"What did I just say. Yes."

"You want…our half ship."

"Yes"

"Our half ship, which does not in fact feature any controls."

"Yes."

"Our half ship, which is, in fact, useless?"

"How many times do I need to say this before it will go through your skull? **YES**! Yes, what else do you expect me answer; maybe? Obviously your species never had much use for brains, if you're the kind of person we're meeting out here. You'd expect the one talking to be the smartest, but I don't think it's possible to show a lower intelligence than what you are. For the last time, _WE WANT THE SHIP._"

"Why?"

Gamzee ambles up to you. "Don't," you say. You don't want them to know that you have anyone important enough to be used as blackmail against you, and you especially don't want them to know you have a moirail. (It's one of the few pieces of tactical knowledge that you're right about. If you can't kill the leader, kill their moirail.)

You turn back to Dirk, and say "Because, you idiot, obviously we have the other half and want to put them together. Like this thing you'd never have heard of called a jigsaw puzzle!"

"We have jigsaw puzzles," cuts in the one you talked to first.

"DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE!?"

"No," says Dirk, "you don't. Of course, you'd obviously have given it to the strongest one in your group, I'm guessing him." He gestures at Equius.

"Where did you learn tactics? Everyone with even the slightest knowledge knows that you give the important things to the leader."

"Wwell, actually-"

"SHUT UP ERIDAN!"

"Just so we're clear, you're saying, 'I'm in charge, and I'm carrying the other half of the ship.'"

"What else would I be saying?! Do I need to repeat everything _twice_?!"

Suddenly, you are not where you were. You are standing with your hair clenched in someone's hand. Oh, and a slight, cold pressure at your throat tells you that there's a knife there. Correction, a sword.

"Just wanted to be clear," says Dirk.

You can't see him, but he's probably looking at the others.

To you, he says "Put the ship down by our half. Then we can talk."

Being in no hurry to die, you comply.

"Let him go," says Gamzee, clubs out.

Dirk looks over at the ship, and then let's you go.

"What's your name?" He asks.

"Karkat," you say, hand rubbing at your throat.

"Well then, Karkat. I suggest you talk to Jane now." You give him a look that you hope shows the proper level of 'what, really?'

Something flickers across his face. Maybe it was his version of a smile. "She's much less likely to kill you than I am," he says.

You are now Jake English.

You're excited to talk to some real aliens, with real alien words, and a language almost identical to yours, even though you on some level understand that you'll be spending a while with them (For some reason half of your ship fell from the sky, so you'll have to share the ship)…

Ten minutes later…

You never want to talk to half of them again. Well, alright, maybe a third. You're not sure about Equius, but you're willing to guess that he is actually a perfectly nice person, if you actually got to know him. You'll have to reserve judgment on him.

Really, reserving judgment is something you'll be doing a lot.

Head full of recent conversations, you edge your way into the ship, so you can think for a bit, and also stretch out your back from where Equius punched you; good grief that punch is at least as strong as any brobot's.

You didn't expect anyone else to be in here, but Roxy's sitting against a wall. It takes you a second to spot the bottle. Where did she get that?

"Heee~eeey, Jake!" She smiles.

"Oh. Hello," you say.

She takes a drink. "Wand some?" she asks, "*want".

"No, I'd rather not."

"Eh," she says, and takes another swig.

You sit there, stretching out your back for a bit, then say, "I thought you weren't drinking anymore."

"Hah," she says, "You sss~ure? Why'd I stop?"

"You know, I was never sure. You honestly seemed much happier after a drink or two."

She lifts up a finger and nods. "Yuip… *Yup"

"Where did you," *Kr*k*, "Agh! Even get that." Your back feels seriously messed up.

"You would be…"

"Yes?"

"You, would, be. . ."

"Yes?"

"Youwouldbeamazedat watchu, (hehe, watchu,) can find in the calves around here. *Caves."

"Ye-es, I imagine I would be."

You stand up, "Well, if you remember why you stopped, please enlighten me, I am genuinely curious."

Something slams into the ship. Roxy just rocks with it and giggles.

You're sure you heard a gunshot, which means someone's shooting the ship, which means you need to be outside fighting them. You clear the door, just in time to miss Roxy blowing you a kiss.

You edge back out of the gap, and see things almost as normal. The conversation is a bit louder than usual, and a robot is lying on the ground, one designed like a tiny plane.

Karkat yells, "Equius, Sollux, get the ship fixed!"

"KK, we don't have time for someone to read off the lines on the screen."

"The screen? You need a hacker?" asks Jane.

"No. I need someone who knows how to code," says Karkat, "There is a massive difference."

"Not that you'd know," says Sollux.

"I could ask Roxy," says Jane.

"Ask, ask, ask, all you do is ask. Why do you not just _tell _for once!?" Karkat is clearly going a little bit crazy because _that_ is not the average talking speed for _anyone_, not even an alien.

"Because I am not their leader, I am their _friend_. There is a big difference!"

"That is true! You are not their leader."

"AT LEAST WE AGREE ON SOMETHING!" Yells Jane, then in a much calmer voice, "Dirk, could you work on the ship too?"

Dirk walks wordlessly towards the ship. She follows him, probably to talk to Roxy. You pull your guns as she walks past.

Karkat turns a look on the other trolls that clearly states that there was no argument. There is not, and never was, an argument there.

Everything is quiet. Kanaya says something in the general direction of Nepeta, she considers for a moment, then shrugs.

Karkat hesitates, then pulls out his sickle, "There are robots coming," he says, "So-"

"Unfortunately, it appears that even with my immense _strength_ I cannot repair this ship with my bare hands. I find myself in need of some form of tool."

Karkat tosses him the matter manipulator. He walks back into the ship.

Karkat sighs, "Anyway," he says, "There are robots coming after us-"

"So wwhat?" asks Eridan, "It's not like they're anythin' wwe need to wworry about. They come in ones and twwos and wwe destroy 'em."

"I think they may have been scouting for us." says Kanaya.

You are now Eridan.

You are about to reply with a scathing comment to Kanaya, when your mind that you filled with old campaigns and tactical knowledge yells at you to listen. If you assume that that _was_ an average scouting force for your enemies, and that you are a good few miles from the facility… The odds of encountering two scouting forces is extremely low, so they must be searching for you. _And _if they started sending forces to where they spotted you last time, _when_ they spotted you last time…

You are so dead. Assuming the force that is probably being sent for you is robotic, and just as fast as you, you have maybe 5 minutes before you get swarmed with robots.

This flashes past your mind in a few seconds, and the only outward sign is yours eyes widening.

"oh." You say.

You are now Jane.

Roxy sets down the bottle. "Sure," she says. She tries to stand up, and falls over onto the floor. She giggles.

You grab her hand, and pull her upright. She leans on you and puts a hand around your shoulders.

You make your unsteady way into the control area. She sits at the chair.

"Sho," she says, "*So* What do you want me to do."

"I guess we need to be ready to take off as soon as the ship's repaired."

"Well _I_ guess that I can do that," she says.

You are now one of the robots that's supposedly heading to fight our main characters.

You walk at a sort of fast march, surrounded by your allies. You see your three targets. You see their nine friends. You see the other four that they have aligned themselves with. You will kill all of them.

There are 64 of you in this group, in a square. You are near the front, 2 back, and on the far left. You are number 101-000010. You don't really have emotions, as such, just devotion to your leader. You don't speak his name, for it is blasphemy for a soulless thing such as you to say his name. To think it is practically a sin. It is certain that you are not to think the name of-

Your memory resets at the mention of the name. You are fed the information about your targets again. The whole process takes mere instants, and your stride never breaks.

You are now Feferi.

You see the first of the robots coming. It looks to be a lone scout. A single arrow brings it down. That'll be Eridan, from the top of the ship. (Everyone with a ranged weapon is up there, behind little piles of dirt. That's only a few people, actually, but they're up there all the same.)

You're actually standing next to one of the humans. She's holding what looks like half of your 2x3dent, which makes you wonder if she's royalty where she comes from. Though if the sign on her shirt is any indicator of her blood color, she might just work in the service of royals, which is still an honorable profession.

Three more robots attack, from the same direction, and then a full dozen more. Nearly half of them are dead before they even get near you, and you kill them quickly enough, but what looks like a full group of them is following right behind.

This will be interesting.

You are now Jake.

You didn't take a spot on top of the ship. You're better suited to up close pistol fighting. You also didn't expect to see Roxy walk out of the gap between the ships.

You're behind a tree when you spot her, and you know instinctively that you really need to get her behind a tree, because some of those robots have guns, and they aren't afraid to use them.

As much as you hate to grab people you aren't actively fighting, you pull her over to the trees.

"Ooohhhh…" she says, "Right, yeah, getting behind trees'n'stuff. Fighting."

For a second she doesn't do anything, then she pulls out a bottle, drinks the contents, and drops her gun.

You are now Roxy.

Right. Now you are ready to wreck some robots. You have a gun. You don't pull it out. You spin around the tree and run at the robots. You trip and fall. You turn it into a roll. The world blurs as much as your thought processes. You have literally no idea what's going on, but you remember, as a side note, that you've fought like this before. You didn't have your gun on you, because of some pumpkin transactions that went sour, so you got hella drunk and started wrecking robots. You broke some fingers, and took a bullet or two, but you lived.

You are now Gamzee.

You laugh. You already have a bullet or two in your stomach, but it barely hurts. You knocked the head off of a robot or two, nothing too crazy. You're perfectly calm- until the moment that you're not.

Your wounds hurt like hell, and you're ready to kill over it. You roar at the robots, and get to work.

You are now Dirk.

The wiring was easy enough. There was extra wire in your part of the ship, and the two halves matched up simply enough. Roxy already finished getting the ship ready to fly, because, as far as you can tell, there wasn't really much to do.

You nod at Equius as you walk out.

"Wait," he says.

"Yes?" you ask.

"I believe there is a shortage of metal to fit the two halves back together," he says, "If we attempt to travel without further strengthening the hull, I fear the ship will explode due to pressure differences."

"Do you need advice?" you ask.

"No, nothing so simple. I believe that our enemies are in fact robotic in nature, yes?"

"Yeah," you say, "So you want me to get their bodies in here, so you can use them to fix the ship."

"Yes, although if you truly wish me to complete this as quickly as possible, I would request scraps of their bodies, if you can find any."

"That shouldn't be a problem," you say.

It really shouldn't be, and if you're right, you won't even need to get everyone inside before he finished fixing things.

You are now Eridan.

You are, of course, an excellent shot with a bow, especially since, if you're any judge, you've never used one before you landed on this planet. However, even so, sometimes a bow is simply not enough. You dive down from the ship onto the ground. You see exactly what you want, lying in the hands of a dead robot.

As you wrench it from hands that are even colder and deader than usual, you happen to spot some kind of note on it. You smile grimly. Well, whoever 101-000010 was, they won't be needing this anymore. You open fire on the robots.

You are now Tavros.

You really shouldn't be surprised that you're the first one down. You aren't actually dead, probably because you haven't actually been hit by any actual bullets, only those weird plasma bolts with which the air is so thick, but still, a few of those to the stomach, and you can't breathe, and everything hurts, and… and…

Your awareness begins slowly fading away. In your last moments of consciousness, you send out a call to the animals you were killing barely a day ago. Thankfully, you don't actually think about that, or they'd never help you. The whole callout lasts only about 5 seconds, but you still only last long enough for your last sight to be a flying fireball.

You are now Nepeta.

Some of the robots that just got here have swords, which you really prefer to guns, since it means you can attack as soon as they can. You're surrounded, though, by a full three of them, maybe more, and definitely less, now that you've gutted two of them with your claws. The other two, (Turns out there were actually 4) charge you at the same time, and you barely manage to dodge. They look ready to try again, when one collapses with its back burning. You wouldn't have expected fire to do that to metal, but you aren't complaining. A blur flies past you, seeming to ricochet across the field, and Gamzee, who happens to be near you, might be mistaken for some kind of massive pin doll, in a bad light.

Speaking of which, you are now Gamzee.

One of your clubs breaks as you bring it through the chest of one the robots. _**"NO," you say, "IT DIDN'T!"**_ You pull the other club out of your inventory, where it obviously has been the whole time, of course, there was definitely no club-breaking going on.

You smash a path through more robots, your only consolation for the lack of blood that they actually grant some resistance when you plow through them.

You are now Equius.

Combat is clearly raging outside, but for you, all that exists is the ever shrinking gap between the two halves of the ship. You don't notice Dirk's presence until he hands you an armful of metal scraps.

"Excellent," you say, "This should be enough to complete the hull."

"Good," says Dirk, "Don't seal it yet, though, I need to try something."

You nod. Dirk goes outside.

… …

You wait for a second, and suddenly, Dirk appears again, but not through the gap. He appears on the teleporter, holding the thing on his wrist.

"Okay," he says, then, "Wait, you try it."

"Why," you ask.

"These are from different ships, right?" he asks.

"Ah, I see," you say.

You try the thing, and appear on the teleporter, after a short delay.

Perfect.

"Seal it," says Dirk.

He ducks outside.

You are now Kanaya.

You don't even feel tired. Neither do the robots, by all appearances. You grab Tavros and haul him over to the ship. One of the humans slashes a few robots that were getting a bit close.

"Listen," he says, "He needs to be in the ship. Press the button on the thing on his wrist."

You do so. Tavros vanishes.

The teleporter must be working, you guess. You pull your chainsaw out again, and return to work.

You are now Gamzee.

The anger has dissipated, and you're sort of lying on the ground, stomach full of lead. Then suddenly, like a tank made of rage, Karkat barrels through a crowd of robots. Somehow he got another sickle and he's flailing around with it like there's no tomorrow. Dimly, you note a roaring sound, and see the ship rising into the air.

Karkat dives toward you. You barely notice the gunshot to his shoulder, but to some part of your mind it screams of a problem.

Soon, you don't think much of anything. You pass out.

You are now Karkat.

The ship is still rising, gaining altitude, passing through the clouds, until suddenly, you come out into blazing sunlight. This is exactly what you did not want to happen. It reminds you too much of Alternia. Oh, and speaking of which. Your memories pour back into your mind. A lot suddenly makes sense, and a lot suddenly doesn't.

It feels almost like your memories come back in reverse order, starting recently, and receding into the past. The last you remember, someone was yelling; Sollux, you think, maybe Eridan too. They were about to fight for some reason. Then you were suddenly on the ship. You wonder whether there was a reason for that specific time. Probably not, you decide. It's not like Sollux and Eridan got on very well as it was, and they already fought once. It was probably completely arbitrary, you decide.

The ship is cramped, with a full 16 people on it. Of course, Gamzee is so close to you that you aren't really taking up all that much space. Oh, and if you're sobbing, which you are patently _not_, then it's just because you couldn't stay and fight. Of course. Gamzee isn't even dead, just, bleeding. A lot. He opens his eyes.

Gamzee smiles. "Hey, best friend," he says, as if he still has all of his blood _inside_ his body.

You smile, because hell, you're already sobbing, what's a little more unleaderly behavior on top of that.

You pull him over to one of the hastily constructed beds. He lies down, and, despite the bullets and blood, you have this unshakable feeling that he'll be fine. Space blurs outside, as the ship goes faster than should be possible without killing all of its occupants. You walk to the front of the ship. Nobody else is in the cockpit, so you're the first to see the ship slow down to nearly a halt, and the planet far below.

You'll definitely go down there, but later. You think that that's enough planet exploring for now.

"Fin." – Orphaner Dualscar, at the end of his comedy routine for the grand highblood (shortly before he died.)


End file.
